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PHP PHP Basics Daily Exercise Program String Manipulation

Nathan Boaldin
PLUS
Nathan Boaldin
Courses Plus Student 12,545 Points

My php concatenation not working?

Why does this not work?

index.php
<?php

//Place your code below this comment
$firstName = 'Rasmus';
$lastName = 'Lerdorf';
$fullName = "$firstname .' '. $lastName";
?>

The error thrown says: Bummer! $fullName should equal Rasmus Lerdof. Lerdof != Lerdorf. Is this the issue?

1 Answer

Jennifer Nordell
seal-mask
STAFF
.a{fill-rule:evenodd;}techdegree
Jennifer Nordell
Treehouse Teacher

Hi there! No, the spelling of the name is not the issue although, I feel like that Bummer! message should be corrected. If you wanted to concatenate two string literals, you'd put the two strings then a period and then the next string. For instance:

$greeting = "Hi there, " . "Nathan";

The end result would be that the variable $greeting would hold the string "Hi there, Nathan". Strings start and end with either double quotes or single quotes, but they must match on both sides. That being said, concatenation is not really needed here. You can use the double quotes feature of PHP to expand the values of the variable.

$yourFirstName = "Nathan";
$yourLastName = "Boaldin";
$yourFullName = "$yourFirstName $yourLastName";

This is very similar to the challenge, and I think you can get it with these hints. Hope this helps! :sparkles:

Nathan Boaldin
Nathan Boaldin
Courses Plus Student 12,545 Points

Thank you so much for your help! With JS is where I first learned to concatenate strings, so php is confusing me a bit. lol. FWIW, would this work:

$fullName = $firstName .' '. $lastName;

Anyway. Thanks, again!

Jennifer Nordell
seal-mask
.a{fill-rule:evenodd;}techdegree
Jennifer Nordell
Treehouse Teacher

Nathan Boaldin Yup! That would've worked splendidly as well. I know, the . as a concatenation operator is a little special. I'm not sure that I've come across any other language yet that uses a dot over a +. :smiley: